Memory Work

One of the things I like about homeschooling is the ability to choose what our children know. Now, just in case you're wondering, Faithful - the one who has to take standardized tests every year has always done VERY well - even on content we never formally discussed. Since I started five years ago, I always thought something was missing. I thought I needed to make things more rigorous. This year I added memory work and it has been working out nicely.



As you can see, our kitchen white board is full to the brim. Around the outside are timeline cards that both boys memorize. By the time they are done, they will have memorized 160 history events in order so that they can know a basic sequence of history. In the middle are poems the boys are memorizing. The thought is, fill their heads with beautiful words and beautiful words will eventually come out in writing or speaking. We've only started. We'll see. I also have the latest Bible verses they are to memorize each week and Gift is learning skip counting so that is up there also.

Now, this is a lot of memorization, but the boys have really shown me that memorization to them is easy. They are memory machines. Gift is actually wiping the floor with Faithful in the speed of his memorization skills. Another benefit of memory work is that they are training their brains to hold a lot of information which should come in handy when they need to study for exams or tests in high school and beyond. All in all, it really has given our homeschool the extra ooomph that it needed.